1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to multimedia object association. More specifically, the invention relates to a system and method for associating multimedia objects for enhancing display and manipulation capabilities for multimedia uses, such as, for example, real-time video conferencing.
2. Description of Related Art
Video teleconferencing occurs when people in different locations send voice and video data to each other in order to simulate having all of the participants present in a single room. Each person in a multi-point conference wants to see all or most of the other participants. Accordingly, the various video streams are presented to each participant in a spatially separate manner, either on separate screens or in separate areas of a single video display. Each of the video conferencing terminals sends a locally generated video image to each of the other participant terminals and receives a video image from each of the other participants. In the prior art, this meant that for a three-way conference, six video streams must be transmitted; for a five-way conference, twenty video streams must be transmitted; for an eight participant conference, fifty-six video streams must be transmitted, and so on. Generally, if N people are holding a televideo conference, then N.times.(N-1) transmission channels must be used. Accordingly, the relatively large number of channels used for a video teleconference involving multiple participants becomes prohibitive with the prior art systems.
Furthermore, participants must have a sufficient number of input channels, decoders, and translators (if transmitting different video formats) to receive and display multiple images from different participants. Accordingly, the required number of channels, decoders, and/or translators also becomes prohibitive.
With the prior art systems, video conferencing participants were unable to customize their video display by keying in or out portions of the displayed image, or by making the various images of participants overlap in a natural-looking manner, or place and size images as they like. The participants were also unable to associate video images with other multimedia objects to enhance the variety of conferencing functions that can be enjoyed.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a flexible real-time video conferencing system for use by a plurality of users in which the required transmission bandwidth to each user is minimized.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a video conferencing system in which each participant receives just one video (and audio) stream of the bandwidth, encoding and video standard that they desire from a central multimedia bridge.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a video conferencing service that gives each participant the ability to compose video images of other participants into a fully customized display.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an infinitely expandable priority driven video composing unit to combine any number of video signals into a single prioritized video stream.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method of associating images of a video display in a hierarchal fashion, and of associating multimedia objects together to enhance video conferencing and other multimedia applications.
It is a further object of the present invention to allow each user to dynamically change who can receive the information they provide to the conference.
If is a further object of the present invention to provide the ability to users to identify individual images in a composed video stream by click and drag operations or the like.
Additional objects, advantages and novel features of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading this description or practicing the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and attained by the appended claims.